Customers shop for products online in various ways. Some customers select product categories and narrow the selection until presented with a reasonable quantity of products to review. Other customers provide detailed search criteria to generate a list of matching products for review.
Still other customers provide generic and vague search terms and are presented with an overwhelming quantity of products to consider. These customers are more likely to visit local brick-and-mortar retail stores for their shopping needs, as retail stores have physical limitations on the quantity of products available for selection, thereby limiting the customer's choices. Because online shopping services may offer a huge selection of items, such online shopping services fail to effectively attract some of the customers who need greater assistance narrowing down their product selection.
Some online systems enable customers to create lists of favorite products for other customers to view as product suggestions. However, the lists are created and maintained by individual customers, and are generally static. Other systems enable customers to tag products with descriptive terms. These systems search for products by comparing the descriptive terms with keywords provided by the customers. However, identifying and correcting incorrect, inaccurate, or misleading descriptions can be difficult.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the drawings.